Pbs President Hangs In Despite Fcc, Shortage Of Funding

Editor's note: Each summer, Tom Jicha reports from Hollywood on the networks' plans for the fall.

PBS President Pat Mitchell opened the 2004 fall preview press tour by declaring that both she and her network are going to be around for a while. Recent events had made neither a given.

It was revealed last month that Mitchell was interviewing to replace the retiring Jack Valenti as head of the Motion Picture Association of America. Mitchell put a semantical spin on the situation during her semiannual session with TV writers. She didn't call the MPAA, Valenti called her, so she thought it was an opportunity worth exploring.

In any case, she said, "I'm still here. I am thrilled, excited, passionate and committed to being here." Translation: Someone else got the job.

Mitchell couldn't be blamed for bailing on PBS. The chronically under-funded network has lost almost a third of its corporate underwriting in the past three years.

Masterpiece Theatre, the jewel in the PBS crown, remains without a corporate underwriter despite an aggressive campaign to find one. This has forced cash-poor PBS to pick up the tab, which, because of the popularity of the franchise, it has committed to do through 2006.

Lack of funding will force other PBS fixtures to either quietly disappear -- American Family is an early casualty -- or to cut back on the number of episodes.

In addition, Mitchell feels threatened by the FCC's post-Super Bowl crackdown on broadcast indecency. PBS, whose high-minded programs clearly are not intended to titillate or court voyeurs and are not widely watched by children, has had an unspoken pass in this area.

The frustrating aspect is that the Federal Communications Commission refuses to be specific about what is permissible. Broadcasters are told after the fact that they have stepped over the line, making them susceptible to draconian fines.

PBS is willing to adhere to the rules, Mitchell said, so long as it knows what they are. "Like all broadcasters, we filed a petition immediately with the FCC, saying we are worried about the chilling effect of these kinds of interpretative standards.

"We've got to err on the side of restraint because we can't make our stations liable for FCC fines. That would be irresponsible of us."

The result will be watered-down programming, which could further exacerbate PBS's attempts to find new financial angels. While this might not be the goal of those whose primary intentions are to banish the likes of Howard Stern from the airwaves, it is the reality. Ironically, commercial broadcasters can afford to pay fines as a cost of doing business. For PBS, even one fine could knock it out of business.

9/11's numbers

Ken Burns, the acclaimed documentary-maker of The Civil War, Jazz and Baseball, is a fan of Michael Moore's and thinks Fahrenheit 9/11 is a "wonderful" piece of work. However, Burns -- whose Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson will air on PBS in January -- wishes people would hold off declaring Moore's anti-Bush film the most successful documentary ever.

"They've been saying Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest grossing documentary. It's not yet. It's got a ways to go to pass The Civil War."

Burns says he has no accurate figure for how much The Civil War has generated in sales of tapes, DVDs and books. One published estimate he laughs at is $600 million. "If that's true, somebody owes me a lot of money." His best guess is around $130 million.

"Civil War didn't have a theatrical release to speak of but the fact is that if Michael's film is at $70 million, basically 7 million to 10 million people have seen it, which is a good night on PBS." About 40 million to 50 million people have seen The Civil War, he said.

Ego-driven considerations aside, Burns is a big defender of Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11. "I've been very disappointed, particularly in a free society, that we should even be talking about whether he has the right to make what people are calling propaganda," Burns said. "Fox News Channel, which claims to be fair and balanced, is doing the same thing. Jerry Falwell has a documentary on the murders that Bill Clinton created, starting with Vincent Foster. The history of our country is the ability to say, `I believe this guy is a schmuck.' He's allowed to do that."

A political reality

Tucker Carlson, the newest right-leaning talk host on PBS, questions how politically effective Fahrenheit 9/11 will be, no matter how many people see it. "There are a lot of fair criticisms of Bush," said Carlson, who also co-hosts Crossfire on CNN. "But I think Moore approaches it in a really reckless way that's not at all helpful. The implication -- indeed it is not an implication, it's a statement in the film -- that we went to war in Afghanistan to facilitate the building of an oil pipeline is just not true."

Carlson says he is taken by the parallels between today's Bush-haters and the Clinton-haters of the '90s. "The kind of underlying assumption of both groups is the same. It is, `We've seen the key to this guy. We have the kind of like Rosetta Stone to his badness. If only we could get this information out and other people see what a bad guy he is, he'll be destroyed.' In both cases, that information consists of personal attacks. In Clinton's case, [it's that] he's a sleazoid. In the case of Bush-haters, it's that he's a liar. I'm just struck by how ineffective that is politically, because at the end of impeachment, we had what? We had evidence that basically every single thing said about Clinton's personal life was totally true. And what happened? Clinton's approval rating went up. So if you ever wanted evidence that personal attacks, even when they're kind of justified, even when they're provably true, don't work politically, it's that."